Just got a bizarre, very personal, completely unhinged hate email from a fairly prominent writer with whom I’ve barely if ever interacted. Just a weird, specific stream of unexpected but clearly long-seething anger.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Didn’t plan to name him, but he just went public with his criticism. Freddie’s opinion of me clearly means a lot more to him than it does to me, so I’ll just say this: It’s funny to be accused of performative outrage by a middle aged guy who recently posted a long rant attacking Taylor Swift.
what an incredible mind palace to imagine abandoning nazi platforms and refusing to pander to nazi audiences is a stance taken out of economics and not that it’s like, ethically bad to do those things
pretty clear that it is never good and that you will not defeat them in the mythical Marketplace of Ideas because their end objective is to remove you or kill you and not “agree to disagree”
They don’t go to the marketplace to debate. Just to recruit. Everything they say is toward that end. And it works.
That’s why they don’t get to have the megaphone.
Also it’s pretty critical if you want to make that argument to produce some level of anti-Nazi content instead of constantly and exclusively whining about political correctness for 15 goddamn years
"Establishment upwardly-mobile liberals," "immensely privileged college educated urbanites," "the NYT subscriber class"... I'm curious who it is Freddie imagines his audience is and how it differs from the groups he rattles off as the ones Radley et al are "playing to"
Whenever I see one of these chuds talking about how Substack has "no right to decide what we read" I slam my head into my desk a little bit harder.
THEY ALREADY DO. They have terms of service and there's definitely things they will kick you off the service for! RW dipshittery just isn't one of them
(This is why the Usual Suspects are so angry about 'woke capitalism'. It means that ideas they dislike have become so mainstream corporations must pay lip service to them, and they're such a dwindling market they can be ignored.)
This is a "why not both?" situation.
Enough people are disgusted at their money supporting Nazis that most businesses find it's economical to follow suit.
When did we lose the thread that nazis are beyond the pale? (He's not saying that directly, but given substack debate, I'm guessing that's what he's talking about). Maybe it's bc my dad was a WWII vet, but this feels like one of those bare minimum things we should all recognize.
there is no moment in the public life of freddie that he was not an absolute tool, as well as a sub-replacement level thinker and writer. just have no idea why anyone has ever thought he offered anything uniquely valuable
I mean, I guess if he’s not baselessly accusing you of sexual misconduct like he did Malcolm Harris, he’s at least got a relatively stable regimen of medications for his bipolar disorder. So, small victories.
